How To Use A Semicolon Correctly

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- [Narrator] Don't you hate it when you're writing,
and argh, you hit this.
Yeah, I know, it's a semicolon, but when
was the last time you even used it?
It certainly seems like we should be using it a lot.
I mean, look at it, right there on your keyboard.
VIP seating.
Take that, dollar sign.
How do you even use this thing?
(upbeat contemporary music)
Think of your sentence as traffic on a road.
A period breaks it into different
segments, like a red light.
The comma is like a green light.
It may slow traffic down a little,
but it's not gonna change the speed dramatically.
And a yellow light causes traffic to hesitate
for a moment, to give traffic a little
bit of room to just breathe.
A semicolon can break a list-like sentence
up into several smaller sections.
They stay more closely associated than
separate sentences would.
If two short sentences refer to the same subject,
they can be joined up with a semicolon.
- Connect the first part of a sentence with
another clause that's closely related to it,
okay, without using a conjunction.
- [Narrator] But semicolons should never go
before a coordinating conjunctions,
like and, but, or, or so.
That's a comma spot.
Where did this weird punctuation move come from?
You can thank the Roman Navy.
Early Romans had a phrase, hasten slowly.
When writing its phrase out, it was represented
by an anchor above a dolphin, as in slow down,
like a dolphin does, among the anchors.
In the 15th Century, Venetian printer,
Aldus Manutius stylized the ancient symbol,
and adopted it as his printer's mark.
Only he was using it as an abbreviation.
As the printing press spread literacy
through the 15th Century, punctuation marks
became standardized among writing.
Playwright and poet, Ben Johnson,
is credited as the first noble English writer
to use the semicolon systematically in his work.
He was known for relying heavily
on quotes of earlier writers.
Many among them were protoges and fans of Manutius,
who happened to keep the Venetian's classic mark alive.
Semicolon use surged over the next 200 years.
Then, the 20th Century hit, and the
semicolon started to disappear.
What happened?
In the 1993 study for applied linguistics,
Paul Bruthiaux studied punctuation marks in writing manuals
from the 16th Century through the 20th.
Bruthiaux concluded that a shift from
spoken to written words for communication
appeared to be responsible for its rise,
but a trend toward simplified sentences led to its downfall.
Another emerging technology may have hammered a nail
into the semicolon's coffin: the telegraph.
Punctuation marks cost just as much as a letter,
so short lines were more profitable to send,
especially across the Atlantic.
When words could cost about $5 each.
Anti-semicolon sentiment became common in writers as well.
Despite all that, semicolons have discovered
new purposes in modern life.
Early emoticons gave it widespread usage.
Programming languages adopted the semicolon
to indicate the end of a statement.
And if you've seen someone with a tattoo of a semicolon,
it's taken on a new purpose for them.
Group, Project Semicolon, the punctuation
is a symbol for suicide survivors,
who could have ended their lives,
but chose not to end the sentence just yet.
So, despite its changing definition,
this little punctuation mark isn't
going anywhere anytime soon.
Its prominent position on the keyboard is well deserved.
There are people who rely on it every day,
for grammar, programming, or support.
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How To Use A Semicolon Correctly

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